


Dregs

by wildcannabis



Category: South Park
Genre: Cigarettes, Coffee, Friendship, Gen, Goths, High School, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-09
Updated: 2012-05-09
Packaged: 2017-11-05 02:25:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/401424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildcannabis/pseuds/wildcannabis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The new school year finds Georgie alone and friendless... or does it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dregs

Village Inn was as it’d always been, same bitchy waitresses, same posers who’d now finally graduated from hot chocolate to coffee. Not that they took it black, but who expected anything along those lines, anyway?

My cup was three-fourths empty. As I sat in the old booth, even the conformists surrounding me seemed to notice the soul-obliterating hole that’d been left by the absence of my three constant companions, all gone this year. My freshman year. Dylan to New York City, to an arts school half-filled with stupid conformists, the other half comprised of tweaked out druggies who thought they knew what pain was. Evan to Europe, to study the roots of Gothicism in Scandinavia and Germany. Henrietta ran away from home the week before their graduation, and had since contacted us, telling of her attempts to publish her poetry in London, where she’d found a job at an old book shop. So I was alone in the wistful half-chill of September, alone with my coffee dregs and cigarette butts. 

Sighing and turning to look out the window into the eternal snow blanket that was draped over South Park, I rolled up the cuff of my sleeve to reveal Dylan and Evan’s parting gifts to me: a snake and a cross, carved into the quick of my wrist with their own personal knives, their brand on me. For Henrietta, I made an ‘H’ that curved up toward the top of my hand. Alone with the coffee and cigs and scars, alone in a town of redneck, conformist apes who played into the hands of the fat cat capitalists. Was I any better than them, really? At least I didn’t take cream and sugar, but that was it.

Then there was Filmore. I didn’t even know why that conformist made such an effort to talk to me so much lately, but he had been and I was very scrutinizing of his attempts at conversation. He was a typical douche bag, best friends with Ike Broflovski and played school sports and other such conformist-like activity.

I’d spent summer feeling the all-consuming weight of the only friends I’d ever known all being gone, and meanwhile, he’d spent it trying nonstop to get me to not shrug him off and hate him and all his stupid, Nazi, conformist friends. It was now the second week of school, the air growing more stirringly frigid by the day, the deadened, browning leaves of spring seen peeking out from under the snow in parking lots and driveways. As I sat in the old booth at Village Inn, watching nature’s atrophy outside the fogging window, I failed to see Filmore come around the other side of the building and enter, making the irritating bells jingle and trill. No, I only noticed him as he sat down across from me, pulling off his red gloves and setting them noiselessly on the table, like winter personified.

Slowly, I turned to face him, sucking on one of the cigarettes that the management of Village Inn had long-since given up on trying to make me smoke outside. I waited. Filmore was always the one who had something to say, something that would come out of his mouth like projectile vomit of the conformist brand. When he simply sat, rubbing his hands together, looking down, I was taken aback; all that cookie-cutter conformist energy always electrifying his deep brown eyes – where was it?

I said nothing, still, eyeing him suspiciously as the waitress came over and he ordered coffee, black. _Black?_ I gave his features a searching glance, deep, unadulterated. My coffee was growing cold. I sipped it with one hand, while the other stifled my cigarette on the table edge and then ran conscientiously over the gifts from my friends hidden up my sleeve. Filmore wasn’t looking at me, but rather at everything else. I would’ve insulted him or left, but for once, he wasn’t acting like so much of an ass-kissing conformist. Plus… black coffee? No way.

When his drink came, I was on to my next cig, my own coffee still not finished. Filmore sipped at his, looking out the window, looking towards the counter where conformist bar stools were set up and a waitress was drying a malted milk glass with a ragged hand towel. The smoke furled up, entwining itself with the air around us, so that an ever-changing line of grey divided Filmore’s head in half. I focused on one, then the other, and then finally, he said something.

“Georgie…” His voice was unenthusiastic. I was curious, but only to the point that I didn’t get up and leave.

“Yeah.”

“Uh…” He looked up then, the glowing cherry stub of my cigarette reflected in his eyes. He looked upset, confused. Probably some stupid conformist crap like his girlfriend broke up with him. “Georgie, do you hate me?”

“Why do you care whether I do or not?” This was entirely unexpected. My fingers brushed against the slithery curves of Dylan’s snake, the gaunt, straight lines of Evan’s cross, my own scrawling groove marks in the ‘H’ for Henrietta.

“Because I don’t want you to, and if you do… I want to know why.” His tone seemed sincere, if whiny and unable to fathom actual heart-wrenching pain.

I sipped up my coffee, pondering a response; what did I _say_ to that? It was true, I hated the kid. By default, by all of the indications of what he was. I had to, I did. What the hell _was_ this?

“It’s… it’s not… I hate your _lifestyle._ Not you in specific. But since when do you give a fuck about my opinion? – No, wait, I can answer that. This summer. How come?”

Silence. Filmore quietly took another sip of the black coffee, his mouth cringing slightly, as if he wasn’t used to the pungent taste. I’d practically been breastfed off the stuff, though. I was highly desensitized; in fact, if you asked me, it should’ve been bitterer, darker.

We were late for school. Not like I cared, I always was. But Filmore… he was punctual, like a good little conformist. Still he sat opposite me, seemingly unaware of the fact. Still silent. “I-I don’t know. It just sort of… it like… I wanted to…” Filmore rubbed his gloveless hands together anxiously, searching for the right words to tell me. I cocked an eyebrow, invisible under the dark sweep of my hair, waiting. I slurped at my cold drink. Sighing, Filmore looked as if he’d conceded to something in some inner battle. “Okay, at first I just, you know… felt bad. Since your friends left, and all. But then… I don’t know… I started to get genuinely interested in whatever it is you do. Drink this bitter shit, smoke, write about suffering and death. I just – I just wanted to understand. But you seemed to hate me, y’know, more than you hated everyone else. I don’t even… yeah…”

Draining my mug down to the dregs, I looked at Filmore, at his slightly pained eyes, at the nervous movements of his bare hands. “Okay,” I said, still thinking, bits of my mind scrambling to come to some sort of consensus. “That’s… that’s okay. And I don’t,” I added as an afterthought. “…Hate you more than the rest, I mean.”

At this, his nervous expression shifted slightly, to one with more life, more energy. I tried not to shudder, then I tried not to let out a crack of a smile.


End file.
